Some years back I wrote and directed the Audubon VideoGuide to Butterflies Common and Endangered with Jim Ebner, who shot most of the footage. We worked with Paul Opler, who wrote the Peterson Field Guides to Butterflies and The Complete Book of North American Butterflies, and is one of the preeminent butterfly experts in the world.

I’m posting clips from shows I’ve worked on and am now distributing through Mastervision. This section, on extinct butterflies, is beautiful, and oddly optimistic. But the atala is the exception, not the rule. I remember that we didn’t want to end on a total bummer, even though it is hard to look at trends (especially the fragmentation and elimination of milkweeds because of Round Up resistant agriculture) and not be pessimistic.